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David Sumner, K1ZZ
Chief Executive Officer
ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio
February 1, 2008
On January 31, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released its report Networked Nation: Broadband in America 2007. The NTIA is part of the Department of Commerce, so it is not unexpected that the report attempts to show that the Administration has largely succeeded in meeting President Bush's goal of "universal, affordable access" to broadband technology by 2007.
Those more expert than I on the general subject of broadband deployment will offer their own critiques of the NTIA report. My own expertise is with regard to broadband over power lines (BPL) and was reluctantly acquired over a five-year period in the course of addressing the serious problem of interference from BPL systems to the radio frequencies that are used by licensed Amateur Radio operators.
BPL technology uses power lines to distribute broadband signals. Unfortunately it has a propensity for polluting the radio spectrum, since broadband signals operate at radio frequencies and the power lines are not shielded to prevent them from escaping. Despite this inherent flaw the Administration, through the NTIA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), has devoted considerable energy to promoting BPL. Yet, the FCC's own data show that BPL has failed to catch on. My particular interest in reading the NTIA report was to see the extent to which BPL would be credited with having contributed toward meeting the Administration's goal, thus justifying its promotional investment.
By the way, BPL manufacturers have made considerable progress in engineering their devices to avoid the radio frequencies that cause the most interference. The FCC deserves no credit for this, since the Commission has shown little interest in enforcing even the inadequate rules against radio interference that it hurriedly adopted in 2004 to promote BPL deployment.
At one time the FCC's semi-annual reports, High-Speed Services for Internet Access, lumped BPL in with fiber optic lines. The FCC eventually recognized that this was inappropriate, since the two technologies have absolutely nothing in common, and stopped doing so after 2004. For some reason, the NTIA's report continues to treat the two together. Even so, reading the executive summary offered a glimmer of hope that the report would be realistic with regard to BPL; it notes that while "the total number of high speed lines delivered over fiber and power line connections grew 789 percent from December 2003 to December 2006…[f]iber optic lines…appear to be almost entirely responsible for this expansion." (The latest FCC report that is available is for December 31, 2006; it was released in October 2007.) Less encouraging was the fact that the term "BPL" occurs no fewer than 45 times in the 60-page report, an emphasis that is hardly justified by BPL's miniscule market share.
Turning to the body of the report, on page 5 "removing barriers to innovative new applications such as…BPL" is mentioned as one of "…a number of targeted pro-growth telecommunications policies that have also contributed to robust technological development in the broadband sector." So, exactly how much "robust technological development" has occurred as a result of this policy of "removing barriers" to BPL that is described more fully on page 8 as a cooperative effort between the FCC and NTIA? One has to wait until page 26 to find the NTIA's answer -- and modest as it is, it is still startlingly at variance with reality. Here the report admits that "BPL has yet to make significant inroads in the broadband marketplace." Then comes the following incredible paragraph:
Reliable BPL subscribership figures are difficult to find. The FCC's most recent data identify fewer than 5,000 BPL customers as of year end 2006. That figure appears low, however. TIA [Telecommunications Industry Association] estimates 200,000 current BPL subscribers, increasing to 700,000 by 2010. Another source forecast about 400,000 customers by the end of 2007, growing to 2.5 million by year end 2011.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? The FCC's data showing fewer than 5000 BPL customers -- a number that dropped in the six-month period covered by the report -- are taken from forms that service providers are required to submit. Why does the NTIA not regard this figure as reliable? The only way that it "appears low" is by comparison with the excessive industry and government hype.
Further distorting the picture, at the bottom of page 26 is an out-of-date map taken directly from the United Power Line Council (UPLC), an industry source with a vested interest in BPL. It purports to show BPL deployments "updated as of July 10, 2007." However, a number of those shown had already been decommissioned by that date and others have been taken out of service since then.
I have followed the ups and downs of the BPL industry very closely for more than five years. There are very few commercial deployments of BPL, and examination of the FCC data state by state shows all of the significant ones are included. The idea that there could be another 195,000 customers out there, happily connected to the Internet by BPL -- yet unreported by their service providers -- is utterly ludicrous.
Even more absurd is the NTIA's citation of the "forecast" of about 400,000 customers by the end of 2007, drawn from a year-old Web promotion for a $3000 "industry report."
It is indefensible that the NTIA chose to include in its report unsubstantiated industry estimates and forecasts that inflate the FCC-documented figure for BPL subscribership by 3900 percent to 7900 percent. If the agency wishes to retain a shred of credibility, it will issue a corrected report with the UPLC map, the TIA estimate and the unsupported forecasts deleted.
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